The renewed knocking at the door gave us a jolt, and we sat up in our sleeping bags.
In Gou Dan's time, Shen Zhiyi had already taken him down the mountain.
Even if the siblings had not gone down, there was only one other outcome: they would have been buried underground by the subsidence and would certainly have died.
Either way, there was no way that child could come knocking again.
Yet the knocking at the door had unmistakably sounded again!
Zhang Rong froze in place. After a few stunned seconds, he relit the candle and turned back, exchanging looks with us.
Just then, I suddenly remembered something. On our first night in Zhang Family Village, there had also been knocking at the door. On the second night, we had caught Gou Dan, who then told us he had not been the one knocking on the first night.
At the time, we could not figure out what "thing" had knocked that first night, so we had simply assumed some mountain spirit was playing a prank on us.
Since Gou Dan could no longer be the one knocking, whatever was at the door now was probably the same "thing" from the first night.
I hurriedly told Zhang Rong in a low voice.
Zhang Rong thought for a moment, then pointed at the window.
He meant for us to climb out through the window first, then catch whatever was outside off guard.
I quickly got up and walked to the window, pulled aside a corner of the cloth blocking the wind, and climbed straight out. Zhang Rong followed.
He gave me a hand signal, then took the lead.
We circled halfway around the house and charged straight toward the door.
But by the time we reached it, the "thing" that had been